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Kobna Holdbrook-Smith (Jeremy Charles) and Aml Ameen (Lavelle) |
Election race – with emphasis on race
SEIZE THE DAY
Tricycle Theatre
KWAME Kwei-Armah says part of the inspiration for his latest play Seize the Day – the second of the Tricycle’s Not Black and White theatre season – came from the election of the first black president of the US.
The other was his “disbelief” at the ascent of Boris Johnson to City Hall, or as one of his characters, Howard Jones, puts it, “If Johnson can walk off the street and do it, anyone can.”
Jones, the pushy sharp-suited head of an unnamed race quango, wants to groom a black candidate for London’s 2012 mayoral election.
His choice is Jeremy Charles (Kobna Holdbrook-Smith) a 30-something insurance executive turned TV celebrity who becomes a national hero after punching a young black thug to the ground.
Jones believes if Charles plays the game of sucking up to the white electorate with his “rags to responsibility” story, he has a chance of winning – and of piggy-backing him into the corridors of power.
The pompous but earnest Charles is attracted to the idea of being able to change things for ghetto youths “from the inside”. But his equilibrium is shaken by Jones’ cynical manipulation of his campaign, his unhappy marriage to his white wife and accusations from Lavelle (Ami Ameen), a youth he is mentoring, that he is “the white man’s bitch”.
What follows is an entertaining if somewhat contrived examination of ambition colliding with race consciousness. Crunch time for Charles comes when Lavelle asks him to intervene in the case of his uncle, who has been arrested by the Israeli authorities as a member of a relief convoy for Gaza.
Phew! That’s a lot of boxes to tick in a single play.
Applying plenty of light touch humour, Kwei-Armah almost pulls it off, then ruins it with an unfeasibly happy ending.
All the same, there’s plenty of worth here and seldom a dull moment. Karl Collins is brilliant as the horribly Machiavellian Jones, a thinly disguised mix of two well known figures from the world of black politics, while Jaye Griffiths, all stiletto heels and ubiquitous Blackberry, plays his sidekick Jennifer to perfection. Kobna Holdbrook-Smith has the difficult task of holding it altogether and, to a large extent, does.
Until December 17
020 7328 1000 |
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